


Lingering Spirits

by WorldsFool



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Angst, Depressed Deputy, F/M, Haunting Dead Seeds, Horror, Sleep Deprived Deputy, Thoughts of Self-harm, Thoughts of Suicide, Toxic Actions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 03:21:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15282480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorldsFool/pseuds/WorldsFool
Summary: The cult is nipping at her ankles, despite their numbers dwindling. Joseph has sent the message that he is waiting for her arrival to his outpost. Her friends are eager and itching for her to put a bullet between his eyes and Rook?Rook has started seeing ghosts.





	Lingering Spirits

It's been four months since her squads helicopter crashed and they were left stranded in the mountains of Hope County, Montana.

The cult is nipping at her ankles, despite their numbers dwindling. Joseph has sent the message that he is waiting for her arrival to his outpost. Her friends are eager and itching for her to put a bullet between his eyes. And Rook?

Rook has started seeing ghosts.

She had come into the war-zone as a greenhorn, someone who had just graduated out of the police academy with gold stars and high praise. They commended her for her leadership skills and ability to adapt at frightening speed. She had been handed her badge and saluted off to the charge of Sheriff Whitehorse.

Rook had never actually killed anyone before Eden’s Gate...But now-Now, she is used to the sounds of gunfire from a distance, the shouts for help and the explosion of aircraft's being shot off-course and colliding into the forest of trees and mountain side. She can’t pinpoint exactly when the blood on her hands stopped making her feel apprehensive. She can’t remember just when snapping someone’s neck stopped making her stomach sink. Murdering Protecting. Destroying Helping. Killing Defending. It’s all getting easier and easier and today she can gun down a cultist without so much as batting an eye now.

She equates the feeling as running on autopilot. It has become second nature; so fluid that her mind goes to a different place when another outpost needs liberated, another travel point needs cleared out, another hostage needs freed. By the time she is done, Rook is tired and the weight of sins on her back has increased by some brick-bearing amount.

She knows that even as a law enforcer, not feeling any empathy for the kill is a very bad sign but who is she suppose to talk to? There isn’t a person she’s met yet who hasn’t asked her to do something for them, fight for them, find something or someone for them. She’s even lost her father figure in the Sheriff with too much to be done and too much work. She can’t go to Pastor Jerome; there’s too much slander with prayer and religion being thrown around, it doesn’t even feel right to sit in church, to confess a sin without feeling some form of slander.

What is she suppose to do? She once staked out an old pharmacy for some kind of over the counter anti-depressant but with the whole of Hope County in a collapsed-tunnel quarantine, nothing is going through and most CVS have been ransacked by both cultists and preppers.

She doesn’t know what kind of place she’s mentally trekked into but she knows it’s not a good one. It’s not safe for her to clean her gun after a long day and contemplate shoving the barrel in her mouth. It’s not safe for her to hike up another cliff side and wonder just how far she’d have to fall for the drop to kill her. It’s not safe to be walking through Montana alone, a bright orange vest painting a target on her back.

The Fangs seem more aware of her war-torn state of mind that her own friends.

Boomer understands in the way only a dog can. He bumps her knee when she looks over the bridge for just too long. He nips her fingers as they itch towards her hostler when no threats are present. Such a good dog that whines and fetches her sticks to keep her distracted from the temptation of drawing red lines against her wrists.

Peaches yowls like a nagging grandmother, bringing Rook her favorite toy to be waved and then thrown. The cats purrs, giving her company on the ground as she stares into space. Her sandpaper tongue helps keep her steady on the ground.

Cheeseburger plops down beside her and gives her his famous bear hugs. He bats at her with large paws in an effort to get scratches. She certain he faints hunger to get her to fish and stay busy.

The group chat and drink among themselves at the Spread Eagle, they had recently moved to Falls End in order to be closer Joseph’s compound for when the day arrives that Rook decides to finish what she’s started and put an end to the Father’s reign of crazy. Right now though, she is pretending to be happy under the influence of seven shots and a single bottle of malt liquor.

Mary asks her if she can bring a case of Miller Lights from the store room. Having already made her calling as Hope County’s personal doormat, Rook stands from her stool and heads upstairs with little staggering or so she thinks, anyways. She could be drunk off her ass and not notice but Mary doesn't stop her so she assumes either she doesn't care or that Rook is steady on her feet.

When she opens to door to said storeroom she is startled as the hinges screech loudly closed behind her and leaves her in the dark. The music from below pounds the walls and sends liquor shaking against the shelves in a rhythmic beat. The air itself vibrates with high energy and sticks her with pins and needles of rising manic anxiety that the alcohol failed to do its job of getting rid. 

Standing in the darkness, she lets her eyes strain as the heat and black of the closed room begins to feel overbearing, coupled with the ringing in her ears and how soundproof the walls seemed, she feels her breath hitch before she goes fumbling for the light switch beside her. Her nails rack over the smooth plastic of the socket, making brief contact with the tiny lever before a bone chilling and familiar voice rings out in dark.

"Here, let me help you."

A flash erupts from the swinging bulb hanged in the center of the room, illuminating the three refurnished pallets made shelves stocked with a dozen or so miscellaneous brands of alcohol. Tinted glass causes colors to reflect against the wall in greens and browns, swirling and dancing as the light sways to and fro. The motions make her dizzy as the ringing in Rook's ears suddenly becomes borderline painful the longer she looks at the sight before her. The seven shots toiling her stomach threaten to rise and her legs shake with that sudden dip of fever.

The living corpse of John Seed stands in front of her. The bullet holes made of her SMG drench the fabric of his vest and shirt, blooming a red rose of death and further dripping blood on the hard wood floor. His clammy and stiff fingers remain intertwined with hers over the switch of the light and then roughly yank her a step closer.

Decay smells off his wheezed breath as she is forced to further look at his speckled face. His hair is disheveled and caked in the mud of the puddle she had left him in to rot. A red line runs across his throat like a slit from a knife-bruising from the metal chain of his necklace being snapped off in triumph. His eyes, once as blue as forget-me-not's now are glazed with the thick blind sheen of hardened film.

He gives her a smile of a cat who caught the canary. His thin lips, dried from days spent rotting and baking under the Montana sun, crack and dribbles black coagulated blood to be lost down into his misshapen and tousled beard.

"Hello, Rook. Did you miss me?"

She screams, John's jovial and wet laughter follows after having wrenched her hand free and staggering to the side for distance. A crate of Jack Daniel's clatters as her ankles bumps and turns into it. She grabs the nearest blunt object she can use for a weapon and winds up with a bottle of Jager as her only means for defense, brandishing it like a knife.

The pain he feigns could possibly be genuine, as he holds a hand to his chest with an expression of betrayal and hurt. The force applied to his already bleeding bullet wounds sounds with a squelch.

"Don't hurt my feelings, Rook. I just wanted to help you." She hisses at him like a wild cat, eyes searching his person for some sign of lie, something to prove it wasn't him- that he wasn't there. It wasn't logical. Crazy. She digs her nails into the palm of her hand until it starts to hurt. Not believing it to be enough to wake her up, she lowers the bottle to briefly grab the meat of her arm and twist. John watches her with an almost sympathetic wince as Rook applies enough pressure to drag a whine out of her throat.

"Now, now. Stop that. If this were a dream you would have woken up by now." She quickly hoists her bottle as he takes a step towards her. His crocodile skin boots sound a well time thump along with the beat downstairs.

He shows his bloody hands with surrender, his palms carry rope burn from the lines of parachute cord being suddenly ripped across his skin. He gives her another charming smile, as charming as a dead man can. Had he still been alive, it would have been like looking at her as though she was sun on a cloudy day-the sun having caught fire and burned his wings like Icarus.

"Hope you don't mind me saying, Dep-yu-ty but you look like absolute shit." He chimes, pointing a single finger to what she knows is the dark and heavy bags under her eyes, the plump and red fullness of her lips from biting at them like candy. Her complexion is similar to his own ghostly pale and the shivers of exertion start up again as the alcohol finally wears off from the sobering sight.

"What's wrong?" He tilts his head, coughing a wet heave into the crook of his arm. His lips come away with a string sliver of blood, mucus, and spit still attached. "Can't get to sleep because of little old me?" She shakes her head in denial, closing her eyes and closing them tight.

'It's not real. It's not real. It's not real.' She chants to herself. Her body locks tight at the sudden feeling of hot air being blown into her face-Exhales of rot that has her heave into her own closed mouth as she refuses to blink open and see.

"Oh, I'm real alright. Don't like looking at your ghosts?” He snarls, in her face. “Then you shouldn't have let your Wrath kill me in the first place." She scream behind her lips as she feels wet fingers brush back a bang behind her ear and then cup her chin. She feels red stick to her skin, tacky and sick, the smell of forest mud, his strong lawyer cologne and burning plane exhaust fills her nostrils.

She hears him sigh, click his tongue and feels his thumb stroke over the dimple of her cheek.

"It’s okay Rook. I’m not mad at you. I can give you some advice for your sleeping problem though." She can picture him giving her that hopeful smile, the same as when she said ‘yes’ during her confession. A force pulls at her eyes to open.

She screams in horror as John's own eyes have filled with copper, bleeding tracks of ruby tears down his cheeks as he grins at her with a mouth full of fire.

 

"̵̢̞̚P̵͚̥̍̈u̵͙̦͂t̶͈̻͒ ̸̭͌̕a̶̤͑͋ ̶̹͜͝b̶͓̈́͆u̴̘̼̍͘l̷̜͒́l̷̟̀e̸̠̍͋t̵̤̒̚ ̵̙͉͊̚i̴̬͛͝n̷̳̆ ̷̼̜̑͠ỵ̴̈́̈́ö̷̪̣́ú̵͕͝r̵̺̃ ̶̺̏̂ͅh̴̨̯̔e̴͙͍̊a̷͍̖͌d̴͈̳̚.̴̨͝ ̸̻̒͠T̴͈̥͒̉h̷͙̹̍͑a̴̳̳͂t̵͚̑'̸̭̋l̸̠̀l̸͈̂̈ ̶͖̣͌h̸̗̙̽̓ȩ̷̪͌l̴̘͈͂p̸͔̎͘͜ ̶͙̼͗̔y̵̧̐͝ö̴̫͙́̕u̴̥̐ ̸̫̼͐g̶̩͐ͅo̴̟̒ ̸͎̫̒t̵̗̃o̴̯̹̅ ̷͓͎̀s̵͈̳͐̚l̵̟͋̍ĕ̷̯͈e̸͇͒̎p̵̳͍͝!̷̳̐̅!̶̘͍̄!̵̢̝̍"̶̼̕

 

A loud bang erupts through the room, finally breaking Rook free of delusion as Mary May comes walking in with a worried expression.

"Rook?"

The Deputy looks at her, labored breathing laced with panic and wide wet eyes. John, is suddenly nowhere to be seen. Mary May looks between her and the bottle of hard liquor in her hand, held threatening over her head.

"You okay? What happened?" Rook licks her lips, blinking back the tears attempting to fall from her eyes. She slowly lowers the bottle, willing her legs to stop shaking as she looks around the room in a dazed confusion. John's corpse has vanished but his evidence still remains. She seems blood on the ground just beside Mary's boot heel.

The blond follows her gaze and looks around the floor, hoping to find what has her friend in such a state..

"What is it?"

Could she not see it? Right. Of course she couldn't see it. It wasn't real. None of it was real. Rook shakes her head and plasters over the cracks of her normal mask. The facade of ‘everyday’ shines bright as a distraction of the slowly and obviously crumbling form of her psyche.

"Nothing...J-Just a rat." Mary curses, shaking her head as Rook drops the Jager back on the shelf and grabs the box of beers she had come for in the first place.

"Shit, can't have rats running around. I mean, I know there ain't really any health inspectors right now to close us down but I am not gonna stand for vermin bein’ in m-" Rook tunes her out, hefting the case of drinks on her shoulder as she leaves the room and lets Mary close the door behind her.

She tries to ignore the scent of burning fuel and lawyer cologne as she steps back into the drinking crowd of the Spread Eagle.

God, she needed another drink.


End file.
